Summary
Dr Rocio A Diaz-Chavez is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Policy of Imperial College London since 2004. She acted as the Deputy Director and Energy and Climate Change Programme Leader for the Stockholm Environment Institute Africa Centre in Kenya from October 2017 to March 2022. She has extensive work and academic experience in sustainability assessment and environmental management tools and methodologies. Her research area focuses on sustainability assessment and deployment of bioeconomy, land use and natural resources and the synergies with energy, sustainability and other SDGs. Her research interests are on sustainability assessment (economic, environmental social and political/institutional) with application on renewable energy, and climate change impacts.
She has participated and coordinated different EU funded projects and worked in different consultancy work for the European Commission as well as in other regions in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. She has collaborated and coordinated different EU FP funded projects since 2004including BEST (Bioethanol for sustainable Transport); COMPETE (Energy Crops and Agroforestry Systems for Arid and Semi-arid Ecosystems – Africa) (2006-2009), Eubionet on solid biomass trade; Biocore, Global-BioPact; AfriCAN; Biotrade2020; Biorescue; COSMOS; CooCE.
She formed part of the FAO and UK’s expert group developing indicators for the Global Bioenergy Partnership. She acted as Chair of the Social Group while developing the Bioenergy Standard for the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). She has been the co-chair of the International Energy Agency for the UK Task 40 (Biomass trading) and contributed to the Round Table on Sustainable Biomaterials guide. She received the SCOPE 2010 Young Scientist Award in Environmental Management for her work on indicators and standards.
She received the SCOPE 2010 Young Scientist Award in Environmental Management.
Dr Diaz-Chavez coordinated different projects with the Stockholm Environment Institute at the Africa Centre in Kenya as Deputy Director: focusing on climate change adaptation and mitigation, arid and semi-arid areas, bioenergy and cooking stoves, bioeconomy, co-benefits of renewable energy among other topics.
Publications
Journals
Njenga M, Von Weymarn N, DIaz-Chavez RA, et al., 2021, From Theory to Practice: The Circular Bioeconomy in Action, Industrial Biotechnology, Vol:17, ISSN:1550-9087, Pages:234-238
Chen KC, Leach M, Black MJ, et al., 2021, BioLPG for Clean Cooking in Sub-Saharan Africa: Present and Future Feasibility of Technologies, Feedstocks, Enabling Conditions and Financing, Energies, Vol:14
Carvalho RL, Yadav P, García-López N, et al., 2020, Environmental sustainability of bioenergy strategies in western Kenya to address household air pollution, Energies, Vol:13